Many commercial products are produced using chemical as well as biological processes. Pharmaceuticals, for example, are produced in commercial quantities using scaled-up reactors and other equipment. So-called biologics are drugs or other compounds that are produced or isolated from living entities such as cells or tissue. Biologics can be composed of proteins, nucleic acids, or complex combinations of these substances. They may even include living entities such as cells. In order to produce biologics on a commercial scale, sophisticated and expensive equipment is needed. In both pharmaceutical and biologics, for example, various processes need to occur before the final product is obtained. For example, in the case of biologics, cells may be grown in a growth chamber or the like and nutrients may need to be carefully modulated into the growth chamber. Waste products produced by cells may also have to be removed on a controlled basis from the fermentation chamber. As another example, biologic products produced by living cells or other organisms may need to be extracted and concentrated. This process may involve a variety of filtration and separation techniques.
Because there are a number of individual processes required to be produce the final product, various reactants, solutions, and washes are often pumped or otherwise transported to various subsystems using conduits and associated valves. These systems may be quite cumbersome and organizationally complex due to the large numbers of conduits, valves, sensors, and the like that may be needed in such systems. Not only are these systems visually complex (e.g., resembling spaghetti) they also include many components that are required to be sterilized between uses to avoid cross-contamination issues. Indeed, the case of drug and biologic preparation, the Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is becoming increasingly strict on cleaning, sterilization or bio-burden reduction procedures that are required for drug and pharmaceutical preparations. This is particularly of a concern because many of these products are produced in batches which would require repeated cleaning, sterilization or bio-burden reduction activities on a variety of components.
During the manufacturing process of pharmaceuticals and biologics there often is a need to incorporate sensors into the manufacturing process so that process variables are monitored. For example, the process variables that need to be monitored may include temperature, pressure, pH, conductivity, and the like. In conventional setups, sensors are placed directly along one or more points of the production process whereby the sensors themselves are inserted into the production stream where the sensor makes direct contact with the reactant or product stream. In conventional manufacturing processes, the sensors may need to be changed, for example, due to a malfunction or because the product being manufactured requires a different sensor. In these examples, it can be a time consuming and expensive process to replace these sensors and also ensuring that reactants or products remain uncontaminated.
SciLog BioProcessing Systems, for example, produces a line of single use disposable sensors for use with bioprocessing applications. These include pressure sensors, temperature sensors, and conductivity sensors. In the SciLog sensors, the entire unit is thrown away including the tubing, sensor, and associated housing. U.S. Pat. No. 7,788,047, for example, discloses a disposable, pre-calibrated, pre-validated sensor for use in bio-processing applications. A problem with the SciLog single-use sensors is that the sensors include an integrated segment of conduit. This integrated segment of conduit adds unnecessary dead volume wherein product may reside. Moreover, the SciLog single-use sensors are available only in a few sizes.